Sunday, 15 April 2012

Social Housing Delivery - An Alternative Model

ByJames R Lingard

CONTEXT

Urban sprawl, increasing road traffic, provision of homes, jobs and infrastructure are all pertinent issues that require addressing if modern society is to become sustainable. This article reviews a project undertaken by UK architectural studio space workshops that seeks to explore these issues. Focussing upon the city of Gdansk, Poland housing is used as a key medium in which to begin exploring the related issues.

Initial investigations of the target District - Wrzeszcz, which sits in the northern part of Gdansk revealed that;

Poland has the highest overcrowding rates in Europe among the population at risk of poverty - currently 64.9%. (EU27 eurostats).The average floor area for a house in Wrzeszcz in 50m.sq, yet around 30% of the available housing stock is occupied by two or more families.Given its population and housing deficit Gdansk needs to deliver 25 homes a week or 1300 a year for the next 20 years in order to meet demand.The Gdansk Government had